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API-University Series #3
RESTful API Design: Best Practices in API Design with REST
Looking for best practices in RESTful API Design? This book is for you! This book is packed with best practices on technical aspects of RESTful API Design, including the correct use of resources, URIs, representations, content types, data formats, parameters, HTTP status codes and HTTP methods. It also includes best practices for evolution and versioning, security, performance and availability issues.
API description languages (RAML and Swagger) are introduced as a way to document your API design decisions.
An API development methodology is proposed to provide some guidance towards efficient API development.
The API-University Series is a modular series of books on API-related topics. Each book focuses on a particular API topic, so you can select the topics within APIs, which are relevant for you.
API description languages (RAML and Swagger) are introduced as a way to document your API design decisions.
An API development methodology is proposed to provide some guidance towards efficient API development.
The API-University Series is a modular series of books on API-related topics. Each book focuses on a particular API topic, so you can select the topics within APIs, which are relevant for you.
327 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 28, 2016
185 people are currently reading
192 people want to read
About the author
Matthias Biehl
13 books14 followersMatthias has provided expertise to international and national companies in the areas of API strategy, API architecture, security, software engineering and software integration. At some point, he got a PhD.
Nowadays, he uses his background in technology and software engineering to help companies realize their digital transformation agendas and bring innovative software solutions to the market.
He also loves sharing his knowledge in the classroom, at workshops, and in his books. Matthias is an instructor at the API-University, publishes a blog on APIs, is the author of several books on APIs and regularly speaks at technology conferences.
Nowadays, he uses his background in technology and software engineering to help companies realize their digital transformation agendas and bring innovative software solutions to the market.
He also loves sharing his knowledge in the classroom, at workshops, and in his books. Matthias is an instructor at the API-University, publishes a blog on APIs, is the author of several books on APIs and regularly speaks at technology conferences.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 1, 2021
I'm a software engineer with a long history of working with and building APIs. I bought the "RESTful API Design" book by Matthias Biehl to complement my extensive on-hand experience with a solid theoretical background and improve my conceptual skills.
The book covers nearly every imaginable subject related to API design: URL design, resources, relationships, authentication, authorization, and documentation.
While trivialities such as HTTP status code are covered in great detail, the author only scratches the surface of complex topics such as quotas, monitoring or performance optimization.
The book also covers two API description languages: OpenAPI and RAML. The respective chapters have pretty extensive code examples, but I could not see that one of these standards has major advantages over the other. I think covering one of these languages might have been enough. That being said, I skipped about most of the RAML chapter.
I found the most benefit for my own purpose in the early chapters, where the author shares his views about API portfolios and how a company's API portfolio should be considered a product of its own. Also, his insights about developer friendly API design being an integral aspect of an APIs success resonated well with me.
The attempt to cover everything is probably the main issue I see with this book. Also, there is a lot of repetitive content, which culminates in the same sentence appearing twice on a single page. Several paragraphs seem to have been copied, slightly modified and reused to work in different contexts.
While the book might be good for establishing a high level overview about API design concepts, I can not recommend it as a comprehensive resource to gain a deep understanding of that domain.
The book covers nearly every imaginable subject related to API design: URL design, resources, relationships, authentication, authorization, and documentation.
While trivialities such as HTTP status code are covered in great detail, the author only scratches the surface of complex topics such as quotas, monitoring or performance optimization.
The book also covers two API description languages: OpenAPI and RAML. The respective chapters have pretty extensive code examples, but I could not see that one of these standards has major advantages over the other. I think covering one of these languages might have been enough. That being said, I skipped about most of the RAML chapter.
I found the most benefit for my own purpose in the early chapters, where the author shares his views about API portfolios and how a company's API portfolio should be considered a product of its own. Also, his insights about developer friendly API design being an integral aspect of an APIs success resonated well with me.
The attempt to cover everything is probably the main issue I see with this book. Also, there is a lot of repetitive content, which culminates in the same sentence appearing twice on a single page. Several paragraphs seem to have been copied, slightly modified and reused to work in different contexts.
While the book might be good for establishing a high level overview about API design concepts, I can not recommend it as a comprehensive resource to gain a deep understanding of that domain.
September 14, 2018
Excellent handbook about API design
The book structures everything you know (or don’t know yet) about API design. Of course big part of it is dedicated to RESTful services, but also contains information about other architecture styles. These days, it is very helpful in designing your API service with best practices and common patters. I would recommend it to all developers and architects who works with SOA on daily basis.
The book structures everything you know (or don’t know yet) about API design. Of course big part of it is dedicated to RESTful services, but also contains information about other architecture styles. These days, it is very helpful in designing your API service with best practices and common patters. I would recommend it to all developers and architects who works with SOA on daily basis.
December 26, 2019
A good book on design of REST APIs. It contains the standards and advices of how to build APIs in the right way. Unfortunately, the book is very direct and has few examples, making it a little boring.
April 1, 2018
A great infosource if you want to understand principles of RESTful APIs. As a business analyst with ambitions of acquiring more expertise in the API design I find this book extremely useful.
October 3, 2020
This book is alright. It covers all the basic information regarding designing an API. I hope the author include more explanation on how an approach is not recommended rather than just stating the fact. In addition, some information such as the API Verbs, HTTP codes are duplicated throughout the book.
I would say this book is more suitable for graduate students or someone who never got a hand working on an actual API.
If you plant to read it on Kindle, as of mid 2020. The code examples on this book is unreadable. Would be better if the author present the code as a picture instead of text since Kindle just formatted it the way it want and makes the code super hard to follow.
I would say this book is more suitable for graduate students or someone who never got a hand working on an actual API.
If you plant to read it on Kindle, as of mid 2020. The code examples on this book is unreadable. Would be better if the author present the code as a picture instead of text since Kindle just formatted it the way it want and makes the code super hard to follow.
August 6, 2022
The book has highlighted few things on API design I was not quite aware about. The main problem I had with it (except for it being boring, annoyingly repetitive and dry) is that it has hardly any examples most of which only scratch the surface of an aspect described.
April 21, 2019
Awesome coverage of REST .really impressed with writing.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews